Protest by pharmacy assistants ‘misleading’
‘They had to apply for posts and then compete with other candidates’
PHARMACY assistants protesting over the termination of their contracts have turned down jobs offering lower wages and misled the public by claiming these were extensions.
Department of Health spokesperson Popo Maja was speaking to Independent Media after the group of pharmacy assistants marched to the department’s headquarters yesterday.
The group said they had signed two-year contracts, which were scheduled to conclude this month and in March. They said the department was not interested in extending their contracts, as expected, to cover the 14 years of the programme.
Maja said the pharmacy assistants were never really a part of the National Health Insurance as they claimed, but were unemployed graduates identified by the government and given employment to gain work experience for a limited period.
“They are misleading the media and they are misleading the public by making baseless claims. Right now they are demanding to be absorbed permanently, yet they have been ignoring posts advertised by the department and the private sector, simply because those posts had lower wages.
“On top of that, they want the department to absorb them with their current wages, forgetting that when a person is on contract, the company does not have an obligation to that person and hence contract wages can be a bit higher.”
Maja said the department wasn’t going to absorb them, as it never made a promise to do so. He said the group felt entitled to absorption because they had provided a service, forgetting that people who were hired permanently were hired on merit and only when posts were advertised.
“Their matter was dismissed at the bargaining council, because it was found